The Campaign for Cancer Prevention is using Facebook's Causes application to direct individual donors to support eight new cancer research projects.

A six million member strong Facebook movement seeks to channel support and private funding directly to the latest cancer prevention research.

The Campaign for Cancer Prevention and its partner, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, leverage Facebook and Causes to raise private funding for cancer research and build the six million member network over the past five years.

This week, CCP announced eight new research projects at BWH that are aimed at early detection and cancer prevention.

Supporters can contribute money directly to the research project of their choice using the Facebook platform, among other methods.

The only funding these eight projects will receive is through the CCP Facebook site.

The eight projects range from studying black women’s susceptibility to lung cancer, to whether blood tests can determine the likelihood of breast cancer, to identifying markers for early ovarian cancer detection.

Amazingly, all CCP projects are designed to deliver results in 11 months or less to yield immediate impact for cancer prevention.

Joe Green, co-founder and president of Causes, said the following in a press release:

As one of the first causes launched on our platform, it’s been truly exciting to watch CCP accelerate and increase its impact. At Causes, we’re focused on empowering those who want to make the world a better place and the Campaign for Cancer Prevention is one of our most shining examples.

In addition to the eight research projects, CCP and BWH launched a new web site, campaignprevent.com, to support the initiative’s Facebook effort.

Almost 116,000 likes and 8,846 donors, mostly small dollar donors, are listed on the CCP Facebook page. It seems to be a true grass-roots movement linking individual funders to the research project of their choice.

The announcement is timely, since October marks National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and several of the research projects focus on breast cancer detection.

What do you think of the CCP’s use of Facebook to help fund cancer research?